


Message Received

by elle_nic



Series: Phone Home [3]
Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Light Angst, look its miranda and andy so its gonna be like a long tough journey before they snap out of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 07:49:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21223097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_nic/pseuds/elle_nic
Summary: She did not call back, and thus began an intricate game of cat and mouse.





	Message Received

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this like a week ago and read over it a few times just to be sure it's what I wanted from this installation in this series. I think it's just right, but please let me know your thoughts! I think you guys liked that last few fics so I hope this one satisfies as well. Feel free to also let me know what you guys think will happen next :)))

She didn’t call back. Not immediately and not for a while. She had sat for ten minutes when the missed call notification came up wondering if maybe Miranda was in trouble and needed her help. She dismissed the idea. Miranda never needed help and if she did why would Andy be her go to? So, no. She did not call back, even if she wanted to desperately. She did not call back.

And thus begun an intricate game of cat and mouse.

She waited until it was a full week after Paris Fashion Week before she ordered a bouquet of freesias to be sent to Miranda. She made the call from her Paris apartment, selected a bouquet online and had a message she had written herself express mailed to the shop. She wanted them sent to Miranda’s house at midday on a Tuesday, hardly a time for Miranda to be home. She confirmed the bouquet, tossed another penny and edited an article. She did not think about it again (a lie).

It was Thursday when her phone chimed for a text. Late, very late, after an evening of writing and business calls to her editor, Andy wondered if she was awake by divine intervention. It was from Miranda. It was scathing. _Flowers aren’t the way to another reference. Don’t send more. That’s all._ Andy smiled and smiled and smiled because she knew Miranda, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Miranda loved the flowers. She wanted more. But Andy was not her assistant anymore, and so she did not have to decipher these messages. She certainly did not have to decide to unravel the hidden meaning and then go forward anyway. Miranda would need to do better.

She didn’t send another bouquet. Instead, she sent an email, a less personal touch, with two words but a novel of meaning. _Message received_, it said. _Now it’s your turn,_ was what it implied. Andy sat back and marvelled at her gall. If she had a penny for every time she wanted to put Miranda in her place… She supposed she did. Miranda did not email back for some time, just as Andy suspected she wouldn’t. She didn’t receive a termination of her employment from Marcia either, nor another text nor a phone call.

She had just written another article exposing the Minister for Justice in France when there was a knock on her apartment door. It was strange that she had not been buzzed from the lobby, but Andy knew who was behind the door, and knew they would never need to be buzzed anywhere. No, she thought as she opened her door to Miranda Priestly. Miranda went wherever she pleased, and it seemed she pleased to be where Andy was. Andy was not yet delighted by this fact, but maybe after seeing how the next ten minutes of her life went, she might be.

“Do you want to come in?”

“Obviously.”

Miranda breezed past her like she was walking into the office, with not a backward glance or a faltered step. She didn’t quite fling her coat over Andy’s dining table, but she certainly placed it down with some emphasis.

“Can I get your coat,” she asked sarcastically.

“I see they’re paying you well,” Miranda said instead of answering. Her gaze was condescending and snobbish… Dismissive of the work Andy was doing in perhaps the same way Andy was once of the work Miranda did.

“Well enough for fast track, indeed,” she said, closing the front door behind her and moving to the kitchen.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting wine,” Andy said, moving to her fridge to get the half full bottle of white wine she had been drinking the night before. She heard Miranda huff out an impatient breath.

“I have eyes, Andréa, and they are very much still in order,” she snapped. “I meant the freesias. What are you doing?”

“Wrong tense,” Andy said after a long sip of the sweet wine. She hated dry, bitter wines.

“What?”

Andy looked at Miranda. She was wearing a dress in a dark purple and black stockings. Her necklace was simple and chunky with the wide neckline the dress had and her hands were bare, the faintest wedding ring tan visible even in the dying light of a French autumn afternoon. “Wrong tense,” she said again. Miranda rolled her eyes in such a familiarly incensed manner that Andy nearly smiled.

“My ears work just as well as my eyes, Andréa. Don’t make me ask again,” she hissed, eyes crackling. Andy took another sip and thought about how she was running low on pennies.

“Then go,” she managed to say. The wine had made her throat thick from the sweetness, she told herself. She wasn’t truly worried that Miranda would leave and never come back (the irony of that, however…). And yet, her heart lurched, begging her to not fuck this up. Not in Paris, it said. Not again. “I won’t make you ask again, Miranda,” she said gently, blandly. Miranda could not know, not yet. She could not know that she was running low on pennies, and that her throat was thick.

“Then answer the question,” Miranda gritted. She began fiddling with her belt, which Andy knew she did when she was in board meetings with Irv.

“I’m not doing anything. You told me to stop and I did.”

“I told you to do your job!”

“You told me lots of things in the time I worked for you, Miranda,” she began. Her wine sat in her hand, a startling parallel to how she held her champagne glass months ago at that gala before Paris. “You told me I was fat, that I was disappointing. You told me to go to Paris. I listened. I’m still listening, but you’re just not saying anything anymore.” Miranda stilled. “You haven’t said anything to me in a long time,” she added shakily, the wine spinning in its glass.

“I told you to do your job,” Miranda repeated. Her dainty hands balled into small fists and fell to her sides. She looked like a Greek statue of a goddess readying for a battle of wits. Beautiful.

“I am.”

“No you’re not,” Miranda insisted. Andy smiled sadly, terribly and took another sip of wine.

“What do you want, Miranda?”

“If I told you, you’d just do the opposite like you did last time. I don’t have time for incompetence, Andréa.”

“You are in Paris in my apartment a month after Fashion Week ended. It’s four days until the next issue goes to print. But you’re here,” Andy pointed out, stepping around the island bench and leaning back, looking at Miranda only a few feet away.

“I’m not incompetent,” Miranda said stonily, snarling a little in a way that highlighted her cheekbones, which Andy thought was unfair.

“No, but you’re not making sense either.”

“I called.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“I know.”

“You’ve-“ Miranda took a steadying breath, trying to fan the flames of her anger, but Andy could tell they were dwindling. “You had never not answered my calls.”

Andy swallowed, throat still sticky from the wine. “I _know_.”

Miranda stared at Andy for a long moment, her reclined figure against the island in the steadily dying light. Miranda did not stop staring at her until it was nearly dark outside, but Andy didn’t mind. For once, for the first time, too, Miranda did not look down to her toes to see what she was wearing. She did not look at her makeup. She did not break eye contact. She was looking, but Andy hoped that this time, Miranda was _seeing_.

“I hate freesias,” she whispered quietly into the nearly dark room. Even in the poor light, Miranda could see the bright teeth of Andy’s smile.

“No, you don’t.”

“I hate your apartment.”

Andy shrugged. “You don’t have to live here.”

“Don’t make me come to Paris for you again,” Miranda whispered. “Not again.”

_No one told you to come here,_ was on the tip of Andy’s tongue, but the silhouette of Miranda’s shoulders stopped her. Andy dropped her gall, her desire to be a little bit difficult.

“I finish here in two weeks. I’ll be in New York before winter.”

“Good,” Miranda said, gathering her coat from the dining table. “Let me know,” she said simply. Andy bristled and was about to tell her that she could buy a calendar and figure it out herself when Miranda spoke again. “Don’t send freesias next time,” which threw Andy off-guard, enough so that she was distracted from being vexed. “They symbolise friendship,” Miranda said at the door, looking back at Andy’s unmoved figure. “We are not friends,” was the parting sentence before Miranda was gone with a click of the latch and fading footsteps.

It was completely dark outside before Andy moved again to turn on some lights. She put away the rest of the wine and sat on the seat that Miranda’s coat had been placed on. There was no trace of the editor in the room. Not her perfume of a piece of silvery hair or lint from her coat. But Andy knew by the thump of her heart and the ticking of her mind that Miranda had been there, and she had said something important.

_We’re not friends._

She laughed. She laughed the way champagne bottles pop then bubble over. The way party poppers burst with tissue paper strings. She was not Miranda’s assistant anymore. She was not Miranda’s friend or ally or colleague. But she was best at reading the editor, and she had certainly deciphered the woman’s words. _We’re not friends_, she had said, but Andy was perhaps the only person in the world that could hear the faint _…yet_ that accompanied them.

So, no freesias, she noted. But no yellow, because Miranda found it gaudy in flowers. She could work with those constrictions. She could do this, she thought in a euphoric brand of panic. She could woo and be wooed by Miranda Priestly. She could read between the lines, but only a little! Miranda still had to do some of the heavy lifting. Andy turned off the kitchen light and hopped into bed, ignoring the digging in of her bra and the tightness of her fastened hair. Because Miranda had come to Paris. She had spoken with her. She had gotten their ball rolling again.

“No more pennies,” she crowed quietly to herself, slipping into a silky sleep, one that would mess up her sleeping pattern with how delicate the rest would be. Her last thoughts were simple before she fell to sleep. _Miranda had come. No more pennies… _

_Message received._


End file.
